The common image of a bee is often the honey bee buzzing around a large, manufactured wooden box, but this perception only scratches the surface of where these pollinators make their homes. With over 20,000 known species globally, the majority of bees live far away from the organized colonies of a beekeeper’s apiary. Where a bee lives depends entirely on its species, ranging from complex, perennial hives to individual, sealed burrows in the soil. Most species are solitary insects with unique and often hidden nesting strategies.
The Social Bee Residence
Only a small fraction of all bee species, including Honey Bees and Bumble Bees, live in large, organized social colonies. The Western Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, is the most familiar social bee, constructing intricate nests from beeswax. Naturally, this occurs within protected cavities like hollow trees or rock crevices, where bees build multiple parallel sheets of hexagonal honeycomb to store honey and rear brood. Beekeepers provide managed hives, which are multi-layered boxes containing removable frames that mimic this natural structure.
Bumble Bees form smaller, annual colonies that are less structurally organized than Honey Bee hives. A queen starts a new nest each spring, often seeking out pre-existing, insulated cavities close to or below ground level. Common nesting sites include abandoned rodent burrows, dense tussocks of grass, or compost piles that provide insulation. The queen uses materials like dry grass or moss to create a lining before constructing wax cells for her first batch of eggs.
The Solitary Bee Residence
The vast majority of bee species, approximately 90%, are solitary insects that do not live in communal hives or produce honey. Each female is responsible for building her own individual nest and provisioning it for her offspring. These bees create individual brood cells, each stocked with a pollen and nectar mixture known as “bee bread.” This mixture serves as the sole food source for the developing larva, resulting in a linear series of nurseries.
Solitary bees are categorized into two main groups based on nesting location: ground-nesting and cavity-nesting bees. About 70% of solitary species are ground-nesting bees, such as Digger Bees, which excavate burrows in bare or sparsely vegetated soil. They favor specific substrates, particularly well-drained, sandy, or loose soil, and their nests often appear as small, raised mounds with a central entrance hole. The remaining 30% are cavity-nesting bees, including Mason Bees and Leafcutter Bees, which use pre-existing tunnels. They utilize natural openings like hollow plant stems, tunnels left by wood-boring beetles in dead wood, or crevices in masonry.
Global Habitats and Environmental Needs
Bees have successfully colonized nearly every terrestrial environment, with species found on every continent except Antarctica. This global distribution demonstrates the adaptability of different bee species to various climates and landscapes. However, bee diversity is not uniformly spread; species richness is highest in arid and temperate regions, rather than the expected tropical rainforests. This pattern is partly because low-lying plants and flowers in deserts and grasslands often provide more accessible food sources than the dense canopy of tropical forests.
Regardless of their social structure, all bees require two fundamental environmental components to survive and reproduce. The first is a reliable source of flowering plants, which provide the nectar for energy and the pollen for protein necessary to feed the adult bees and their young. The second requirement is the availability of suitable, undisturbed nesting sites, whether that means bare, stable soil for ground-nesting species or dead wood and plant stems for cavity-nesting bees. Where a bee lives is ultimately dictated by the local availability of both forage and a safe, appropriate substrate to raise the next generation.